


tell me another

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 21:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3665910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The man from Dorian’s dreams meets his gaze as he gets off the subway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tell me another

The man from Dorian’s dreams meets his gaze as he gets off the subway.

Dorian doesn’t realize it’s him, at first, since the man is facing away from him, fiddling with an ipod.

He gives the man an absent glance, lingering on the freckles, the arms, how he’s slightly heavy but in a way that works for him. Then, less absently, he notices the architecture of the man’s shoulders, how his sleeves reveal two lovely, built arms, how most of the skin Dorian can see, which isn’t much, is dusted in freckles he can hardly notice since the man’s skin is dark enough to disguise them.

The subway car jolts and Dorian’s attention is jerked away to where he accidentally bumped in a middle aged woman who is now giving him the stink-eye.

“Ever so sorry,” Dorian says, trying his best to smile pleasantly. The subway car jolts a second time and then the breaks screech as it stops, and Dorian’s grip tightens on the railing. This time, he doesn’t bump into anyone.

When he looks back on it, Dorian won’t know what made him look up, or what made his eyes go in the direction they do. But he does, and he meets the eyes of the man from before, who immediately stops thumbing at his ipod.

A jolt goes through Dorian, recognition that he doesn’t know what to do with until he places the man’s face, the face that has been haunting Dorian’s dreams for weeks now.

Which wouldn’t be a problem- Dorian would have figured he saw the man earlier and his subconscious injected him into his dream, then he would have gone about his day and his life and nothing would have changed.

Which is what would have happened, except the man meets Dorian’s eyes and then widen, and Dorian gets this niggling in his chest of unbelievable familiarity, like he’s known him forever-

_Dorian_ , the man says, though it’s lost in the overwhelming noise that is the New York subway line at nine in the morning.

Then the subway doors are closing and Dorian couldn’t have reached the man even if he hadn’t been frozen in place, white-knuckling the railing, watching as the man twitches as the train starts moving again, twitching like he wants to run after it.

The train quickly cuts off Dorian’s view of the man, leaving Dorian in a cold shock. He leaves a handprint of sweat on the railing when he lets go to get off the train, and the entire walk to the café he can’t get the man’s face out of his head, the way his lips shaped Dorian’s name.

And it _was_ his name, he’s sure of it, though he gets less so when he arrives at work and recounts this to his co-workers.

“You probably saw it wrong,” Cassandra says, and passes Dorian a mug to dry.

From the back room, Varric calls, “Or you slept with him while blackout drunk and ran out on him the morning after.”

“Or that,” Cassandra nods.

Dorian scowls at her, stacking the dried dishes in a tupperware container. “I would have known if I saw him before,” he says, trying to find the least precarious way to stack the most amount of dishes. Andraste knows he doesn’t need more coming out of his paycheck for breaking dishes while attempting to put them away.

Both Varric and Cassandra make noises of disbelief. About the only thing they can agree on is antagonizing him, Dorian’s found.

He continues to slot plates around the edges of the container, considering. “I’ve been having dreams about him,” he says, rushed, and then waits.

“So you’ve seen him before, you just don’t know where,” Varric calls- Dorian has no idea how he can hear him from this far away, Varric insists it isn’t a dwarf thing. He emerges from the back room with a stack of paperwork, and Dorian tries to look busy with his dishtowel.

“I,” Dorian says. He clears his throat, keeping his eyes trained on his hands as he dries the next plate Cassandra hands him. “No. I haven’t seen him before.”

“You must’ve,” Cassandra says.

“I haven’t,” Dorian insists, getting snappish despite his best intentions. He starts stacking plates next to the container, it’s full now but if he leaves to take it out he’ll never get up the courage to tell them. “I’m telling you I’ve never seen him before, he’s never seen me, and yet I’ve been dreaming about him for weeks.”

This makes them both pause, Cassandra giving him a look and Varric glancing up from the paperwork he has propped up on the desk next to the chopping boards.

Dorian glares at them both until Varric says, “Correct me if I’m wrong, kid, but the last mage to have a prophetic dream died over two thousand years ago.”

“It wasn’t prophetic,” Dorian starts, and opens his mouth to explain it can’t be prophetic because everything is different in his dreams: in them, he doesn’t know about any electricity except for the sparks that come from his fingers, the streets are made of dirt instead of asphalt, and the only way to communicate with anyone is sending a message to them via messenger bird.

But he doesn’t get to say any of it, because Cullen leans into the kitchen with coffee grains smeared across his nose and says, “Dorian, we’re running out of spoons, is this one clean?”

Dorian looks at the one Cullen is pointing at and nods distractedly.

“Thank you,” Cullen says, ducking back out, probably to put said spoon next to someone’s coffee and then serve it to them with an overused smile.

Dorian thinks back to his dreams where Cullen leads armies.

 

 

-

 

 

It’s dark out when Dorian gets back to his apartment, and he walks in just in time to see Sera swearing rudely at the TV screen.

Dorian smiles despite himself, hanging his coat and coming to sit next to her on the couch. She curls her feet underneath her to make space.

“What are the citizens of Hollows Creek doing now,” Dorian asks.

Sera watches the screen, shoving popcorn into her mouth in handfuls. “Friggin’ Jameson broke up with Jill again, ‘for her own good.’ Ugh. Self-sacrificing wanker.”

She throws a fistful of popcorn at the screen and Dorian watches it bounce off onto the carpet with distaste.

“You’re cleaning that up,” Dorian tells her, and is promptly hit in the head with a piece of popcorn. “Ow.”

She flashes a grin at him, but it quickly vanishes as characters Dorian vaguely knows start taking each other’s clothes off. “Oh, piss it! Stupid idiots already agreed it was a bad idea and that they shouldn’t- oh, come on.”

“Bastards,” Dorian agrees absently, and pokes at the skin below Sera’s healing tattoo, a clutch of arrows sitting across her right forearm. “Did you remember to put healing cream on it today?”

Sera grunts.

“Sera.”

“I’ll do it after this episode,” she says. “Easy for you to always remind me, you just magic yours healed, never have to remember to put on the sodding healing cream.”

Dorian runs his fingers fondly over his most recent tattoo he got a month ago, a line of poetry curling around his wrist. It’s not his favourite- by far, his favourite is his first tattoo, a snake coiling all the way up his right arm- but he’s proud of it, as he’s proud of his others: mage sigils up his ribs, a flame licking up his shoulder, and some sigils of his very own design to cover up the scars from his father’s attempted blood magic ritual.

Dorian eyes Sera’s new ink, which is still puffy. “And I could do the very same with yours if you’d just-”

“Magic my ink and die, Dorian,” she says, not taking her eyes of the screen.

Dorian starts flickering his fingers in the tattoo’s direction until she punches him in the shoulder and threatens to mess up his moustache.

“How was class,” Dorian asks when they’re more or less settled back on the couch with neither of them shooting suspicious looks at each other.

“Boring,” Sera says. “Professor J told me off for talking in class, like it’s still high school. Oh, Cole’s out tonight.”

“Again?” Dorian twists to see Cole’s door. “Where has that boy been going for the past few weeks?”

Sera shrugs. “Dunno. Partying?” She meets Dorian’s wrinkled nose with an eyeroll. “Let’s hope not, for everyone’s sake. Could you imagine him at a party, weirding everyone out with his weirdness?”

“Go easier on him, Sera.”

“I’ll go easier on him when he shuts up about my intimacy issues.”

“Fair,” Dorian allows, and sits back to watch the insipid lives of whatever soap opera Sera’s addicted to this week, always switching shows just when Dorian gets attached to the characters. He guesses this one will grace their apartment for another week, tops.

_I’m having odd dreams,_ he thinks of saying. _You’re in them, sometimes. You kill people with arrows and you’re very good at it._

He keeps quiet in the end, and goes to bed early. The dreams come quicker, now.

In them, the scar that has been in the sky for millennia rips open and green floods outwards.

 

 

-

 

 

He would forget if he could, but he wakes up with the remnants of the dream lodged in his mind and they don’t fade even as he gets ready for work, walks down the steps to the subway station.

He can’t help glancing at the Fade scar as he walks there- it’s the same as ever, a grey, knotted thing that is visible no matter the weather. Dorian can see it ripping open as clear as day, though no-one’s seen such a thing for thousands of years.

He gets on the subway and scans for the man, the hope dissipating as he looks from face to face and doesn’t see him. He dreamed about him again last night- the man is the most prominent thing from his new dreams, is the thing. Places, people, names- they occasionally get blurred when Dorian wakes up, fading as dreams are supposed to, but the man is clear as day, and features heavily in the dreams, always. Fighting or fucking or bleeding, laughing in bed with Dorian, hip cocking against a table as he reads a book, sun thatching through his hair as he catches a demon on the sharp end of his axe.

Dorian is trying to think about how much rent is going to cost this month when someone taps him on the shoulder. Dorian turns, and suddenly he remembers his dream from last night: he was taking down demons with his staff, and then an axe had come out of nowhere and embedded itself into the last demon’s skull.

He remembers, in the dream, turning to see the man that is now in front of Dorian and saying _good, you’re finally here! Now help me close this, would you?_

He doesn’t remember what the man replied in the dream, but he does remember his expression, and it’s almost exactly like the man’s face now: slightly stunned, and more than a little confused.

“Hi,” the man says. He rubs the back of his head and Dorian notices a breakout of freckles along the bridge of the man’s nose. He looks different than in the dreams- he’s wearing clothes from this era, for one. “Uh. Sorry, this is weird.”

“I agree.”

The man laughs, wets his lips. “Uh,” he says again. “Do you-? I mean, have we met? Before?”

“You mean other than yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Not that I can remember.”

“Oh.” The man deflates a little, and Dorian is stuck grasping at nothing, terrified the man is going to walk off, unjustly scared despite not actually knowing the man.

“But we must’ve,” Dorian says. “Because we know each other’s names. That usually indicates knowing someone.”

The man’s eyes light up, filling Dorian with unholy joy that makes no sense. “You know my name?”

Dorian doesn’t know why he said it- he always knows the man’s name in his dreams, but it slips away upon waking. But he opens his mouth and says, “Yes, you’re Tanner,” and it just _fits_ , like Dorian knew all along.

“And you’re Dorian,” Tanner says. He wets his lips again, and Dorian knows it’s a nervous tic without actually knowing it, and distantly worries if he’s going completely crazy.

“I am,” Dorian says. “Sorry, but do you happen to be a mage?”

“No, I’m just, I’m human.”

“Ah.”

“It’d make it less confusing if I was a mage, right,” Tanner says. “Or an elf? Because they at least have prophetic dreams, even if they haven’t in ages. But nope, still human.”

“They aren’t prophetic,” Dorian hears himself say.

“I figured,” Tanner says. His teeth worry at his bottom lip, and Dorian has a memory he shouldn’t have, a knowledge that Tanner was always touching his mouth, licking his lips, biting them, and that it drove Dorian crazy. “But- what else could they be?”

“I don’t know. But they’re definitely something.”

The train bumps to a stop and people start filing out around them, and Dorian gets the feeling this isn’t a conversation they should be having on a train.

“Could we talk about this somewhere a tad quieter,” Dorian asks.

Tanner nods, and they head out onto the platform, Dorian getting out his phone to tap out a text to Cassandra, telling her he’s going to be late and he doesn’t know how late exactly. His phone starts vibrating seconds after he sends the text, but he pockets his phone and walks with Tanner up the crowded steps.

Once they’re in open air, it’s not any less crowded but it feels like there’s more breathing room anyway.

They both glance up at the Fade scar, and then at each other when they realize the other is doing it.

“You saw it too,” Tanner says. “We’re really having the same dreams?”

“Apparently.” Dorian’s palms are sweating. He rubs them on his skinny jeans. “Definitely not prophetic, though, unless we’re adding time travel on our list of impossible things that are happening.”

“Then what else could they be? Have you heard anything about- whatever this is?”

“I don’t even know what it is,” Dorian admits as they walk along. “All I know is that I’ve been having spectacularly vivid dreams about completing an unidentified quest with a slew of people, one of them being you, a man whom I’ve never met in my life yet have memories of having very bendy sex with.”

Tanner flushes fantastically, and Dorian grins and then coughs.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Tanner says, determinedly not meeting his eyes. “Uh. Have you met anyone else who’s having these dreams?”

“No.”

“Oh. I have.”

Dorian stops dead in the street for a moment and nearly gets run over by several important-looking businessmen. “You what?”

“I know some others who have been having the same dreams.”

“Who?”

“A few friends of mine. And a few friends of theirs. It seems whoever we’re dreaming about are having the same dreams, we’ve been trying to find everyone.”

Dorian stares at him. “Just how many people are having these shared dreams?”

“Oh, I don’t think they’re _shared_ , ‘zactly,” Tanner says. “Everyone’s experiencing them from their own perspective- but, yeah, okay, they’re a little bit shared. Uh, let’s see. There’s Iron Bull and his lot, though he’s been having the dreams more, the Chargers have just been getting bits and pieces. And Blackwall, he’s getting it just as bad as Iron Bull and us.”

“Right,” Dorian says, blinking as he places the names to the faces he sees in his dreams. “I. Wait, so you’re saying that everyone in the dreams is experiencing them at some level?”

“From what I’ve seen, yeah.”

Dorian grabs his wrist. “Come with me, will you?” He drops it as soon as he realizes what he’s doing.

“O-okay,” Tanner says, and they weave through the streets of New York. “You look different than in the dream,” he says when they’ve covered several blocks, gamely answering Dorian’s influx of questions.

“Well, yes,” Dorian says. “So do you. You aren’t lugging around that axe, for one.”

“And you have glasses. And don’t have your staff.”

“I keep reaching for it,” Dorian sighs. “Though I’ve never had one. I do have my rings, though.”

“Yeah?” Tanner reaches down and takes Dorian’s hand, turning it over as they walk. “Some of them are familiar, like they’re from the dream.”

“We don’t know how much they take from reality,” Dorian says, trying not to twitch in Tanner’s grasp. The touch of Tanner’s fingers against his palm is familiar, like everything Tanner does.

Tanner grazes a knuckle across Dorian’s favourite ring, then lets go of his hand, flushing again. “Uh. It’s a good change.”

“What is?”

“From how you look in the dream,” Tanner says, and then backtracks: “Not that you look bad in the dreams, you look very- uh.” His breath hitches. “What I’m saying is you look good in both. Dreams and reality.”

“Thank you,” Dorian says when he’s able to manage coherent words. “You, too.”

“Thanks.” Tanner starts chewing his damned lip again, and Dorian is blissfully thankful when they finally get to the café he works at.

Dorian leads Tanner around the back, and Tanner looks panicked for a moment until Dorian says, “I distinctly remember you taking down eight trolls on your lonesome, I think you can walk into an employee only room without actually being one,” and then Tanner’s huffing a laugh.

Cassandra starts in on him when Dorian walks in, throwing her dishtowel at him. “Where in Andraste’s name where you? It’s nearly lunch rush-” she stops when he spots Tanner, her eyes widening. “Who’s- who’s this?”

“I think you know,” Dorian says. “It seems we’ve been sharing dreams.”

Cassandra snorts, but it doesn’t sound as sure as her usual ones. “That is impossible.”

“And yet,” Dorian says. He cranes his neck towards the back room, yells, “Varric, could you kindly grace us with your presence?”

There’s a crash and then the door is opening and Varric is walking out of it, cursing under his breath and limping slightly like he just dropped something heavy on his foot. “What’d you do this time, Dorian?”

“I’m offended and hurt,” Dorian says. He taps Tanner on the shoulder. “Varric, have you by any chance been having dreams where this man swings axes at trolls and various other beasts?”

Varric raises his eyebrows as he takes in Dorians’ question and Tanner. “I… might have,” he says, suspicion creeping into his tone. “And just how did you know that? Just who is this clown, anyway?”

“The people featuring in those dreams all seem to be having the same ones,” Dorian tells him. “We don’t know what it means.”

“Don’t know what it means,” Cassandra repeats slowly. Her knuckles go white in the dishtowel as he grips it. “Dorian, this is- this is magic beyond anything that has been known in- in millennia! Not to mention Varric is a dwarf and I am a human, even if we could get dreams like this it should not be possible.”

“It shouldn’t,” Dorian agrees. He leans back out the door, says, “Cullen, come here for a moment, would you,” and waits for Cullen to come over, wiping coffee grounds on his apron.

Cullen’s smile droops into confusion when he sees Tanner. “Why is this man in the kitchen,” he asks, and he starts to ask something else before his voice trails off and his frown deepens, still staring at Tanner.

“You’ve seen him in your dreams,” Varric supplies. “Where you’re a, a troop leader or something, I’m kind of fuzzy on that. You have this big fur coat you never take off and it stinks to high heaven. And your desk has a crack in it from when I accidentally shot it during a game of Wicked Grace, sorry about that.”

Cullen’s eyebrows go further and further up his head as Varric talks, and when he stops, Cullen nods slowly, then says, “I. What?”

“We are cursed,” Cassandra says, and Cullen looks at her in concern.

“We aren’t cursed,” Dorian says. “No-one’s been able to muster up the magic for curses for centuries.”

“No-one’s been sharing dreams like this for thousands of years,” Cullen reminds him. He rubs at his forehead, looks over at Tanner again. “This is so strange. I _know_ you, but- I don’t.”

“I always got you down to your smallclothes in Wicked Grace,” Tanner says, and then shakes his head. “Underwear. Sorry.”

“What do we do,” Cassandra asks, folding her arms, and suddenly Dorian remembers the armor she always wears in his dreams, thick-plated and fitting her like a second skin. She looks towards Tanner, and Dorian realizes with a start that they all are.

Tanner realizes it last, squaring his shoulders distractedly. “Uh, guys, I know the dreams are messing us all up, but I’m not- whatever I am in the dreams, I can’t- guide you or lead you or whatever I do. And what even _do_ I do?”

“You lead us,” Varric supplies. He shrugs his broad shoulders. “Inspire us. Run into hoards of demons with us in tow. That’s all I can remember. You’re definitely something, though. One thing I do remember is that you earned every bit of respect we all gave you.”

Tanner throws his hands up. “Yeah, well, maybe in the dreams, but here in reality I’ve done jack shit, so until I start doing something leader-y could you please stop looking at me like I’ve got all the answers?”

“Yes, ser,” Varric says, grinning when Tanner shoots him a look.

“You said all the people in our dreams are having the same ones,” Cassandra says. “Does that mean they all exist?”

“We assume,” Dorian says.

Cassandra nods, short and curt. “Then we shall find them. That must be the first step to stopping whatever this is.”

“I already know a few of them,” Tanner says. “Does anyone else know anyone?”

“Two,” Dorian says. “Sera and Cole.”

Tanner perks up. “Cole might be able to help. He’s all with the- weird stuff. Wait, is he a spirit here?”

“He’s human, I’ve seen him eat.”

“Oh, good. Or, not good, I think a spirit would be more useful with this.” Tanner rubs at his lip absently. “Okay, so who’s left?”

 

 

-

 

 

Several people, as it turns out.

Sera doesn’t take the news well, and locks herself in her room for hours, yelling about magic and dream people coming to life, and she throws a book at Tanner when she finally emerges. Then she sits down on the couch and grudgingly tells them about Professor Josephine Montilyet, along with the RA Leliana.

When they tell Cole, he blinks and says that he found Solas and Vivienne a week ago, both of whom come over when Cole calls them. The apartment starts getting cramped at this point, and when Tanner suggests going to the Tavern, a place where Bull and his lot frequents, they all agree gratefully.

A man Dorian instantly recognizes as Blackwall startles when the group comes in, and then inhales his beer and starts coughing.

Cullen hits him on the back until Blackwall croaks, “Thanks,” and then stares up at him, frowning. “Shit.”

“Shit,” Cullen agrees, and sits beside him.

They order beer and keep it coming.

Iron Bull walks out of the bathroom as the beers are being ordered, and he greets Tanner and starts to ask who everyone else is before he sees a few faces and then he starts grinning and laughing like a mad person.

He slaps Tanner on the back and Tanner rocks forwards with it. “You found ‘em, Boss! Knew you would.”

“You have too much faith in me,” Tanner says, but he’s smiling. He sits next to Dorian, who determinedly doesn’t twitch when their shoulders brush.

“This is very odd,” Dorian comments, waving his hand at the table and its occupants, all of whom know each other despite having met before.

“Very,” Tanner agrees. Dorian watches him drink his beer out of the corner of his eye and remembers doing this a thousand times over.

They watch as the Chargers come in, their faces lighting up when they see the new company. A man comes and pulls a chair up next to Tanner, a man whose name Dorian knows is Krem without asking.

“Nice to finally meet you guys when I’m not sleeping,” he says, and Dorian sighs, says _likewise_ , and doesn’t comment on how Krem seems unable to sit properly in a chair in reality, too.

 

 

-

 

 

They toss around ideas for the next few weeks without actually getting anywhere. Solas and Dorian get into a few heated discussions that go more or less around in circles, and everyone goes to their jobs and tries to pretend like the whole thing is normal.

Tanner works as a journalist for the New York Times, but his hours are parodic, so he meets up with Dorian on his breaks when he can. Cullen’s been more lenient with giving out breaks ever since he found out they’re all connected by shared dreams, but he’s also been staring into space a lot lately.

Neither Dorian or Tanner directly address the issue where they’re lovers in the dreams, and Dorian is both grateful and burningly curious. He thinks they’re both affected by it, the fake memories, the ease in how they talk, like they’ve known each other for years instead of weeks. He catches Tanner watching his body move: licking foam off his spoon, tapping his fingers on the table, his neck shifting as he stretches.

Dorian is used to this, since he came to New York. What he isn’t used to is everything connected to it. Sometimes Tanner looks at him with such fondness it both scares and intrigues Dorian to the point of breathlessness.

“You do know he’s not me, right,” Dorian says one day.

Tanner looks at him. “I know. But- he sort of is, also. I’m pretty much that guy in the dream, minus the huge axe.”

“I know.” Dorian’s adam’s apple bobs and Tanner watches it before looking back at Dorians’ face. “I- I just wanted you to remember. That we aren’t them.”

Tanner nods, dropping his gaze to the table. He picks at his muffin, peels off tiny bits of the paper. “Hey, how’d everyone end up working here?”

“What?”

“At a café,” Tanner explains.

“Oh,” Dorian says. “Well, Cullen was in the army, but he defected and then came and opened up a coffee shop because apparently it’s better than leading troops through people who want to kill you. Cassandra was in the navy, I think, and that’s all I can get out of her. And Varric’s a writer, this is just his job that actually pays the rent.”

“And you?”

“Ah, yes. Me.”

“I expected you’d work in, in- a library, or something.”

“I’ve considered it as a career option,” Dorian admits. “But to be a librarian you need a degree, and to do that you need money, and I haven’t saved enough yet.”

“Oh.” Tanner’s eyes track on the table before meeting Dorian’s again. “Did, uh. I mean, did you-”

Dorian fixes him with a tense smile. “Same old story, I’m afraid. My father attempted to blood magic me into heterosexuality. I found out, and I left. I got a job in the café the week afterwards, thanks to Cullen’s generosity.” He sips his coffee, pauses. “Tanner, do you think it’s coincidence that most of us know each other already, or do you think it was predetermined who got the shared dreams and it drew us all together?”

“Like destiny?

“Like destiny.”

Tanner considers. “I don’t know,” he admits finally. “But these- these dreams, whatever they are, they’re big. They mean something. There’s definitely some destiny in there, and yes, I think there’s a fair bit of destiny involved in bringing everyone together here, too.”

“I don’t know if I like the idea.”

“Really? I think it’s… magical.” Tanner smiles, a slow one that makes Dorian’s stomach twist. “The universe helping us out, or whatever.”

“Or damning us all,” Dorian points out.

“The dreams don’t feel damning.”

Dorian hums, sips his coffee, licks foam from his moustache. “You’re just saying that because so many of them involve a surplus of me.”

Tanner laughs and flushes. “That may be a contributing factor, yes.”

_When I’m in the dreams, whoever I am there loves whoever you are in them,_ Dorian thinks. He’s starting to worry the dreams and reality will start to overlap with that, too.

 

 

-

 

 

The Fade scar opens as Dorian’s walking to the subway, and everything goes to hell.

He doesn’t notice at first, he’s texting Cole about dinner and the downside of anchovies, but then someone screams and he looks up to see more and more people staring at the sky in horror, and New York gets infinitely louder as people start yelling all at once.

The Fade scar opens for the first time in over two thousand years and demons begin pouring out of it and Dorian stays stock still and watches in sheer horror until his phone starts ringing and he snaps it open.

It’s Sera. “Please please please don’t tell me this involves us, this seems like something that would involve us lately, I refuse to fight demons I don’t even know how to fight demons no one actually remembers what they look like but the museum drawings I’ve seen look like something you don’t want to friggin’ fight!”

“I,” Dorian says. His mouth closes, opens, and he starts to run back towards his apartment. “Pack survival supplies and weapons, get everyone gathered, I’ll be back there in five minutes.”

“Don’t you dare get eaten.”

“I’m very sure demons don’t eat you, they just kill you,” Dorian pants into the phone. He hears something explode a few blocks away. He doesn’t look up. He runs faster.

 

 

-

 

 

It takes a while to get everyone together- they have to travel on foot since traffic is fucked and demons are appearing on the roads at random and smashing cars.

Sera and Dorian only pack what they can carry, yelling at each other most of the time about what ‘the necessities’ entails, and yelling at Cole when he tries to help.

They meet the others in the Tavern, and then wait for ten gruelling minutes for the people who aren’t there yet to arrive. Finally Solas turns up, blood splattered all the way down his clothes.

Tanner turns up last, a green gash burning on his right hand, panting about a darkspawn who called himself Corypheus, and that he knew them all. That gets everyone moving.

Not that they know exactly where they’re off to, but they all agree it’s better to live to fight another day than try and take down a city full of demons and a darkspawn with their meagre skills. As it turns out, none of them are as well-versed in killing things as they are in the dreams.

They get out of the city and keep going, sleeping when they can, fighting demons when they have to- they’re not too great at it, but they can hold their ground, and there’s something achingly familiar about fighting them. Tanner closes rifts when they start appearing.

Five days after the Breach opens for the second time in history, Dorian starts carving a staff.

 

 

-

 

 

Two weeks after the Breach opens, Corypheus finds them.

“I am Corypheus,” it says, grotesque and growling at them and so, so impossible. It advances and Bull runs at it only to be thrown into a nearby staircase. “It is good to finally meet you again, Inquisitor.”

“My name is Tanner,” Tanner says, hands steady but white-knuckled around a gun, his right palm burning green. “I don’t know what you want, but you have the wrong people.”

“I have the exact right people,” Corypheus tells him. “You have been orchestrated, put together again after thousands of years to finally fall to me. It has been written since before this happened the first time around.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Tanner says, and then presses the button that connects to the explosives that brings the building down on top of him.

Tanner barely makes it out in time and Krem gets hit by a falling bit of rebar, and Bull strips off his shirt to hold it to Krem’s head. Ridiculously, it makes Dorian want to giggle and not stop.

“You always looked odd with a shirt,” Dorian tells him, and Bull laughs dully before looking at Tanner like everyone else.

“Corypheus,” Cullen says. “The darkspawn from the old ages. He called you the Inquisitor.”

“I’m,” Tanner says, and his breathing tightens. “I’m not, I’m not him, I learned about him in school, people argued over if he was even real, I can’t be him, I’m _me_.”

“He said we’ve been put together again,” Leliana says. Her chin is trembling but her head is held high, her back ramrod straight. “It makes sense. We’ve been born again and drawn together. The dreams are our previous life.”

“Bullshit,” Sera croaks. There’s rubble in her hair and blood streaking down from a cut on her forehead, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “The only me is me, okay? Only ever been one Sera, and it’s me. I wasn’t some chick born in the old ages, I was born in _Brooklyn_. I-”

She falters, puts a hand to her forehead. It comes away bloody.

Everyone stares at each other, at their own hands, at the ground. Dorian grips his new staff. What do they do with this information, that they have been alive before, that these dreams they’ve been having are glimpses into that other life?

“We need to keep walking,” Tanner says.

They do.

 

 

-

 

 

The world is ending, and though they’ve been through it once already, it doesn’t make it any less terrifying.

Dorian reads whatever he can get his hands on about his past life- the name of the mage got lost over the centuries, but Dorian does know a lot about him from school, since he was a big hit in Tevinter, at least modern Tevinter. The redeemer who freed the slaves, who reformed Tevinter entirely, but apparently not enough, since Dorian still has the blood magic scars from where his father attempted to make him straight.

There is nothing, Dorian notes, that hints at his former self being gay. He does so hate that.

“I can’t help but notice that none of us are equipped for this,” Dorian says to Tanner one day when they’re hiding in an abandoned hotel. “This saving the world thing.”

Tanner snorts. “What are the required skills, exactly?”

“More than any of us have,” Dorian replies. “For one, magic has dulled considerably over the ages, and I can’t do two thirds of what I could have done back then.”

“Maybe that will change, what with the Breach being open,” Tanner suggests.

Dorian considers. “I have thought it’s been getting stronger.”

“Cole is getting more, uh.” Tanner scrunches his face on one side. “Spirit-y since the Breach opened. Maybe the same will happen with your magic.”

“I hope so.” Dorian rolls his staff in his hands. “I’ve never done most of the magic I have in my dreams- in my other life. I miss it.”

“I miss my axe,” Tanner admits. He hefts his axe, one they stole out of a Target on the way out of their city. “This doesn’t have the right feel to it.”

“Nothing does,” Dorian says as he sits down next to Tanner on the stairs. “None of this is the same.”

Tanner shrugs, picking at the carpet. “I think some things are.”

“Like?”

“All of us.” Tanner looks sideways at him. “We act the same with each other, like we did last time. We feel the same about each other.”

He flushes when he says the last bit, and he starts examining the carpet at their feet.

Dorian stares at him, his own flush creeping up his neck. This _man_ , enchanting Dorian body and soul, in both lifetimes-

_I can’t imagine any time, past, present or future where any version of me doesn’t love any version of you_ , Dorian thinks, and it chokes him, that thought. It wraps around his throat and tightens.

This is how their relationship goes, in their last lifetime:

They sleep together and Dorian nearly leaves before Tanner drags him back, tells him to stay, coaxes him back into bed to sleep, and Dorian wraps his arms around him and tries not to be too confused. He tries to leave again in the morning, not wanting to be a chore, but Tanner asks him why and Dorian tells him _isn’t it just about pleasure_ and Tanner’s face goes pinched, then smooth.

_Not for me_ , he says. _If it’s like that for you, I- you should probably leave now, if that’s the case. I’d still like to be friends, though, if that’s okay with you. But if it’s, if you don’t wish to, of course you shouldn’t feel obligated._

Dorian flounders _. It wasn’t just about pleasure for me_ , he blurts, feeling foolish as soon as the words leave him. The last time he said something close to that, he got a sympathetic look and a quick shove out the door.

But Tanner has always been good at turning Dorians’ world on its head. He smiles, says, me too, and then starts chewing his lip, more nervous this time. _Would you- come back to bed?_

_Yes_ , Dorian says, and sleeps next to Tanner for the rest of their lives.

Dorian doesn’t know what ‘the rest of their lives’ where like, in their other life, exactly- he gets glimpses in his dreams, sometimes, of silver hair and wrinkles and eyes that hold more love than Dorian knows what to do with. And he wants that, wants Tanner, it’s been even easier to fall for Tanner the second time around, but-

“I think I’ve missed you for all my life,” Tanner says, and Dorian looks at him. “I mean, I didn’t know anything was missing, but- I think something in me did. My soul, or whatever part of me lived back then, with you.”

Dorian’s chest constricts. “I honestly don’t know what I can say to that.”

“You always said the sweetest things,” Tanner says, smiling distantly. “Others didn’t know they were sweet, but I did, because I knew you.” He hesitates, eyes still on the carpet. “We aren’t them, Dorian. I know that. But we could be- we could be us, if you wanted.”

_Come to bed_ , Dorian remembers.

_Yes_ , he remembers saying. It was a good day, two thousand or so years ago. The sun filtered in through the curtains and magic sparked at Dorian’s fingers and the world was ending.

Dorian leans in first, in this lifetime.

 

 

-

 

They find Skyhold about two months after the Breach opens, when they’re following rifts, Tanner closing them one by one.

None of them recognize it at first, a massive, crumbling castle over the mountains, but then Solas says, “Oh,” and Tanner says, “ _Oh_ ,” and Dorian squints at it and realizes.

“Oh,” Dorian says.

They set up camp in the castle more out of hope than anything, hope that someone will come and help them if they spend enough time at this place that was their haven when they did this last time.

 

 

-

 

 

People start showing up, none of them particularly helpful, but they show up nonetheless, looking for shelter. There are a few towns a while away that have supermarkets, and Josephine sets up a system that keeps the castle stocked with food.

They keep killing demons, but at the end of the day they come back to Skyhold, which accumulates people faster than Dorian can count.

He learns about Sera’s Twitter account after about a week of this, and despairs about magicking her phone to have free wifi wherever it goes, the only magic thing Sera allows to touch her apart from Dorian.

“Inquis_Rules,” Dorian reads. “Andraste’s ass, Sera!”

Sera swipes her phone back. “What? People love it.”

“You’ve been Tweeting about how we’re the reincarnations of the Dragon Age crew!”

“And people love it!”

Dorian puts his head in his hands. “Do they believe it?”

“Some,” Sera shrugs.

Dorian drags her over to Tanner. “Have you heard about her Twitter account?”

Tanner looks at him. “Inquis_Rules?”

“Oh, Maker.”

 

 

-

 

 

A scruffy man named Hawke shows up, a pissed off elf named Fenris in tow, Merrill and Isabella and Anders arguing behind them as Hawke approaches Tanner.

“We haven’t met,” Hawke starts, but Tanner cuts him off.

“We sort of have.”

“Right,” Hawke says slowly. He scratches at the back of his head. “Yeah. Shit’s fucked, right?”

“Shit’s fucked,” Tanner agrees.

“What can we do to help,” Hawke asks.

 

 

-

 

 

When a woman who calls herself Morrigan turns up and announces she has a plan for taking down Corypheus, Dorian braces himself for the worst. He gets it. A near-suicidal plan that just might work, but probably won’t.

“One good thing about all of this,” Dorian tells Tanner than night, “Is ‘thank god we’re not dead’ sex.”

“I do love it,” Tanner nods.

“Also ‘we’re about to go on a very dangerous mission and might not make it back’ sex,” Dorian says.

Tanner grins. “Why Dorian, whatever are you saying?”

“I’m saying we’re both idiots for willingly putting ourselves through this end of the world mess again,” Dorian says, and pulls him down onto the bed.

 

 

-

 

 

They win, barely, mostly thanks to Cullen’s effort to train Sera’s army of Twitter followers to fight and Tanner making a particularly rousing speech at the cusp of the battlefield.

For a moment Dorian thinks Tanner didn’t miss Corypheus’s last blow after all, but then he sees him through the smoke and he can breathe again.

New York is levelled. People are getting carried away on makeshift stretches. The sky is healed, smoke rising into it.

“You’re alive,” Dorian says when Tanner grins at him. Dorian isn’t panting so much anymore, the months he’s spent fighting demons have tightened his abs, to say the least. “And I’m alive! Incredible, isn’t it?”

He’s said it before, he knows, in another life. But it’s starting to feel less like a trap and more like a gilded path Dorian can walk on into whatever’s coming next.

**Author's Note:**

> here's my [tumblr](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com/).


End file.
